How to Design a Periodic Table Lab

The periodic table is the basis of all chemistry. It is essential that students understand how the periodic table was created, and how certain elements have similarities. A periodic table lab should expand on lessons learned previously in chemistry classes and cater to the abilities of your students. Allow your students to draw their own conclusions based on experiments. The periodic table is all about trends and the lab questions and activities should identify these trends.

Instructions

1

Set up the room with seven tables. On each table, a different element is located: iron, copper, zinc (metals), sulfur, silicon, carbon (nonmetals) and lead (semimetal). Tell them to observe the characteristics of each element, including luster and color. Use a battery, a short length of wire, and a bulb to test the conductivity. The bulb will light if it is a conductor; it will stay dark if it is a nonconductor. Crush the element gently with a hammer. It will either shatter (brittle) or flatten (malleable). Place the element into a beaker with 20ml of 1 molar hydrochloric acid. Observe whether it reacts or not. Record the results at each station. The metals will be lustrous, shiny, conductive, malleable, and will react with the hydrochloric acid. The nonmetals will be dull, brittle and won't react with hydrochloric acid. Two of the nonmetals will be nonconductors. The third, carbon, will be a conductor. The semimetal will look like a metal and conduct electricity but it won't react with hydrochloric acid. This demonstrates the differences between metals and nonmetals.

2

React calcium and sodium with chlorine and bromine. Fill a flask with chlorine or bromine in a fume hood. Place a lid on this. Drop the metal in. Repeat for all four combinations. This demonstrates that metals react with nonmetals easily and vigorously. Separate out the sodium bromide. Empty out the excess bromine and place some chlorine gas into the flask. Brown bromine gas will be given off. This demonstrates that chlorine is more reactive than bromine and is substituting the bromine in the sodium bromide to create sodium chloride.

3

Give students samples of lithium, potassium, iron, copper, magnesium and calcium. Label each sample A to F. Tell the students to write down their initial observations about the metals, such as luster, color, softness, and so on. Place each sample into water. The group I metals (lithium and potassium) will react vigorously, the group II metals (magnesium and calcium) will react less vigorously and the transition metals (copper and iron) will not react. Tell your students to pair up each metal according to the way it reacted. This demonstrates that each group of metals has a set of similar characteristics.